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Why Do We Still Commute?

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#121

Post by pixl97 »

bartedinburgh wrote: post #50

I think it's connected with the rise of bullshit jobs. If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world. The app/design is your deliverable that anyone can see and judge. If your job is a poorly defined "management" or "product ownership", with no real deliverable, how can your work be judged? Your job turns into convincing other people that your job is useful. Wo…

If your job is well defined it can be contracted out to a non-employee, which means another member of the gig economy, rather than a full time job with benefits. This is where the future is going. Anything that has a very strict definition of the work that can be done will be subject to automation or outsourcing. All the 'bullshit' that is left is what defines the full time job. Welcome to the future.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#122

Post by ashark »

briandear wrote: post #110
twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

Who ultimately pays for this congestion tax? The employees in the form of lower salaries, the customers in the form of higher prices and the shareholders in the form of lower profits. I prefer an alternative approach: a telecommuting incentive tax credit. Telecommuters themselves get a tax credit and companies also get a tax credit. That would be the fastest way to spur more remote friendly workplaces. Then the envir…

You... prefer the version that makes everyone pay for telecommuters, rather than making only those who directly interact with non-telecommuter companies pay, and which is more open to being gamed/scammed? Why?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#123

Post by ataturk »

twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

Something has to happen--my commute is only 11 miles but it often takes 40 minutes because of a stupid bridge that has had every social engineering plot applied to it to no avail (HOV lanes with pay-to-use transponders being the latest fashion and cops to enforce the rules slowing everyone else down).

My career has suffered because I have never wanted the stress of a long commute nor could I afford the real estate prices and city problems involved with being closer in. It's a bunch of diminishing returns every direction I look, so my solution was to just find work that was less desirable but at least manageable in the context of my whole life situation. I contend that people who don't do that eventually suffer mental breakdowns, but have no evidence to back up that claim other than conjecture.

As it stands, my current commute is still bad, but I bet it's only 10% as bad as the hell most people around here go through. I've decided that working for a living is just generally bad for health, but a necessary evil, of course. I probably sound like a whiner, but I am truly interested in the commuting problem because I work for a company that heavily promotes cycling to work and ride sharing. Unfortunately, the infrastructure between my home and my work location precludes safe cycling along much of the route so I don't do it, but a lot of employees do. Instead, I stupidly get up at 5:45am, get out the door by 6:30am or so, creep along on a stupid, dark bridge with lots of other stupid people, then arrive to work around 7am or so, depending on the breaks. At least the drive home isn't as bad as long as I'm on the road by 3:15pm or so.

I do get the occasional work from home day, but our team is highly collaborative, so I'm at a disadvantage if I'm not at the office. In previous roles I had more autonomy and could thus make a better go of remote work. I worry that 100% remote roles make you a non-entity in your organization and thus dispensable.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#124

Post by marksellers »

ransom1538 wrote: post #82
BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…

Now if only people would stop using `@here` for every little thing, it'd be easier to separate "blue" notifications from "red" and Slack would actually be the perfect model of async communication. I could prioritize whether to pull myself from my current task to look or not.

Doesn't work when people just write "@here, making nachoes" all day.

`@here` should really be yellow. Only direct communications red. Or something other than the current system.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#125

Post by dragonwriter »

BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

> There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well.

There are extensive sets of studies that show all of that it generally doesn't, where it especially doesn't, and why it doesn't (which the article mentions.)

Data > anecdote.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#126

Post by timthelion »

briandear wrote: post #110
twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

Who ultimately pays for this congestion tax? The employees in the form of lower salaries, the customers in the form of higher prices and the shareholders in the form of lower profits. I prefer an alternative approach: a telecommuting incentive tax credit. Telecommuters themselves get a tax credit and companies also get a tax credit. That would be the fastest way to spur more remote friendly workplaces. Then the envir…

Tax credits are, IMO, a bad thing for normal people. Most people do not know have the know-how to take advantage of them.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#127

Post by drchickensalad »

briandear wrote: post #110
twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

Who ultimately pays for this congestion tax? The employees in the form of lower salaries, the customers in the form of higher prices and the shareholders in the form of lower profits. I prefer an alternative approach: a telecommuting incentive tax credit. Telecommuters themselves get a tax credit and companies also get a tax credit. That would be the fastest way to spur more remote friendly workplaces. Then the envir…

So then what about the government revenue loss from tax credits?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#128

Post by briandear »

nunez wrote: post #62

Why do we still commute? Because outside of the tech bubble, most jobs still require face to face communication and living close-by to the office in many cities is cost-prohibitive to many.

Most jobs don't require face to face outside of physical services such as the trades or cutting hair. And the jobs that do require face-to-face -- many of them definitely don't require an office. (i.e. insurance claims adjusting -- that's a field job, so there isn't really a "commute.")

Selling insurance: not required. Customer service for the electrical company: nope. Most of that is on the phone. Logistics for a trucking company: also phone/computer based, no face to face (or rarely.) Medical claims processing -- never face to face Coordinating cable TV installation appointments: all phone or online based

If you think about it almost ALL jobs can be done remotely. I agree that most jobs still require it, but that isn't because of the nature of the job, but the lack of vision from those particular industries. Most businesses seem to operate under 19th century ideals.

I realize not everyone wants or can work from home; but I would advocate for a decentralized workplace -- remote working with perhaps small satellite offices scattered around the world -- offices that can simply pop-up at WeWork/etc. As employees in the area need/want.

Obviously a hardware company like Apple actually needs a physical space for people to build things. Same for Boeing, Tesla, etc.

But Facebook? Farmers Insurance? They don't sell anything physical.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#129

Post by ptero »

ransom1538 wrote: post #82
BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…

> If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office

While this can work for some people, such "interruptible anytime" mentality may not be good for many workers. For example, when I am most productive I need to minimize, and ideally eliminate, disruptions. Such periods are short (2 hours at most for me), but I could do 90% of day's technical work in those 2 hours. If someone wants something, unless it is a blocker for a large team, I will put it away and get back to it later.

This has nothing to do with being remote or local, this is just the mode at which I am productive. I try to treat folks who work for me the same way: we can still meet daily in the morning I try to give them enough structure so I do not need to preempt them every hour. Things happen, there are failed systems that need to be fixed now and other fire drills, but I find most people in technology development more productive when on an async comm channel. I am.

Maybe I am just old and you youngsters do not need to do it this way :)

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#130

Post by tbrownaw »

BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

When people say that they can't communicate as well with someone who isn't in the same room that doesn't necessarily mean that a remote setup doesn't work. It could simply mean they're just lazy and not willing to adjust to a different kind of work environment.

It could also mean they actually have sufficient social skills that they're able to make full use of the higher bandwidth available face-to-face, and aren't willing to suffer thru the markedly inferior communications that are all that's possible over the 'net.

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